Dealer Has an Ace: Do You Take the “Insurance?” CMS Incentivizes Hospitals to Drop Appeals

Medicare appeals are at an all-time high. Back in January 2014, the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals (OMHA) stated that a health care provider with a Medicare appeal, may not have the case assigned to a judge for at least two years, and may wait even longer for the appeal to be heard.

Since the beginning of 2014, the Medicare appeal backlog has only grown. With the passing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which increased the amount of regulatory audits on providers in an attempt to partially fund the Act, more and more providers are finding themselves audited and in disagreement with the overzealous results. More and more providers are fighting the audit results and filing Medicare appeals at OMHA.

Now, because in large part of the massive backlog, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is offering hospitals an “administrative agreement mechanism.” In other words, if the hospitals agree to dismiss the appeal, CMS will agree to partial repayment for the claims at issue. Specifically, the hospital will be reimbursed for 68% of the disputed claims.
Notice the offer from CMS only pertains to hospitals. CMS has made no such offer to long-term care facilities (LTCF), which have been vocal when it comes to aggravation resulting from the Medicare appeal backlog.

For CMS’s offer, if a hospital is owed $1 million, then CMS will agree to reimburse the hospital $680,000 if the hospital dismisses the appeal.

What if the hospital has multiple appeals? CMS will only offer this meagre, olive branch if no other appeals are pending. As in, you must dismiss all lawsuits in order to receive the partial payout.

Personally, I call this a raw deal.

Think of blackjack. The purpose of blackjack is to have two cards’ sums equal 21. Only with 2 cards equaling 21 does the player receive more than the bet. You bet $100 and hit 21 with an ace and a king? You get paid $150.

“Insurance” is a side bet which you can take when the dealer’s face up card shows an ace and only pays 2:1. You bet half your bet for insurance; so if you placed a $100 blackjack bet, your insurance bet should be $50. If the dealer hits blackjack, you lose your $100 bet but get paid on the insurance. On a $50-insurance bet, you’d win $100, and lose your $100 bet. If the dealer doesn’t have a blackjack, your insurance bet is forfeited. Either way, by making an insurance bet, you lose money.. You do not have the chance to win 100% of a blackjack payout.

This is essentially what CMS is offering. You are holding an ace and CMS is holding an ace. Will you take the partial payout?

Many of these pending appeals by hospitals are a result of auditors’ determinations that a Medicare recipient was received as an inpatient instead of (as the auditor believes proper) an outpatient.

One of the reasons that I believe the 68% payout from CMS is a raw deal is because the auditors are not always right. Why take 68% when you are owed 100%?

My question is: Are these auditors M.D.s?

When I present myself at a hospital emergency room, I hope that the decision for me to be admitted as inpatient or outpatient hospital admission is a complex medical decision contemplated by my doctor based on medical necessity, not an insurance auditor. After the physician determines that a patient needs to be admitted, an auditor is second guessing a physician’s decision that was made in “real time” with multiple variables at issue.

The Social Security Act (SSA) provides numerous defenses for a provider to assert against an auditor challenging the medical necessity of a service, in this case whether the patient is admitted into the hospital as inpatient. The rendering physician’s medical decision should be upheld absent clear and convincing evidence to the contrary.

Some people suggest that the auditors’ emphasis on inpatient stays versus outpatient stays will cause hospitals to err on the side of caution and just keep patients in observation status to avoid inpatient status.

We need to prevent the hospitals from fearing to admit patients as inpatient due to overzealous audits and mistaken determinations from non-M.D.s who believe the patient should have been outpatient. I say, go all in. Do not take the “insurance.” Do not take the 68%, if you deserve 100%.

I ask because depending on the success rate of appeals and the ROI I was deriving from the funds, if I worked at a hospital, I might advise the boss to go with this. If the hospital is getting an ROI as low as 15% on their invested funds, this would net out to 90% of the original appeal amount in two years (and if your appeal success rate is 90% or lower, this is an obvious one to take). Many net 30s will often give you a 1% discount for paying within 10 days. If that was agreed upon and all of the money provided the cushion necessary to be able to pay vendors that offered 1%/10 n/30 terms within the 10 day window and do that for two years, you’d get a 24% ROI right off the top. That would provide a net value of 104.55% over that two year period.

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Knicole C. Emanuel

Knicole C. Emanuel is an attorney at Potomac Law Group in Raleigh, NC where she concentrates on Medicare and Medicaid regulatory compliance litigation. See legal disclaimer @ "About Knicole."
Follow her on Twitter at @medicaidlawnc.